Pages

Welcome to "From Bitter Waters to Sweet"

As I walked the streets of my small midwest town praying for the people and the churches of the town, the words came to me, "Make bitter waters sweet."Those words made no sense at the time.Surely if those words actually came from God they weren't about me. I, the pastor's wife, had a life that other women in my church envied.Shortly after that, my life fell apart and the bitterness that lurked beneath the surface came to the top.But God did not leave me there. Just as He can make crooked paths straight, raise valleys, and lower mountains, so also could He make bitter waters sweet.This blog contains bits and pieces and large chunks of my ongoing journey from bitter waters to sweet.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

I went through a time where it seemed that I was losing relationships right and left. It was during this time that I lost the friendship of the couple I mentioned in my April 12th post.

I had lost my in-laws to death within 5 weeks of each other. And in the event of losing my mother-in-law, whom I was very attached to, I realized that she had filled a void left by my sister several years back. Because, you see, I didn't lose my sister to death. She is still very much alive as far as I know. But she had become estranged to the family and refuses contact. Any contact we tried to make, she accused us of stalking her. Even if we left her alone for a few years and just wanted to pass on information to her.

Losing her, because, it was so strange, I never fully grieved or recovered from it. Death would have been easier to deal with than the flat out rejection she handed us. Anyway, when my mother-in-law died, I also had to face the fact that I had truly lost my sister, maybe forever. I almost got rid of the coffee mug she gave me once that said "Sister - a life time friend." But I kept it anyway as a memorial to the good times we had before things went weird.

So in all of this loss and rejection, I wanted to curl up in a little ball and just go through the motions of life.

Once , when I was trying to make a come back to something like normal, this song from tree63 came on the radio:

And while the chorus was playing, "You give and take away. You give and take away. My heart will chose to say, blessed be Your glorious name." I broke down and openly grieved on my bed saying, "You give and take away, you give and take away." (Job 1:21) I was able to push through to a little bit of peace.

Then I had a dream.

I dreamt the kids and I went to a nearby town in our van. On the way back, just outside the city limits of that town, my van broke down. I didn't know what to do so I just took my kids out of the van and we started walking home, four towns away.

The dream made no sense until I found in a dream book that a van can represent family. Then it hit me. I was losing family and friends and just walking away rather than fighting for them. Granted, there wasn't a lot I could do about my in-laws. And it wasn't like I never prayed for my sister because I did. But I didn't pray with the law concerning thieves in mind.

And anger rose up inside of me and I prayed to God. I reminded Him that He was the righteous judge and that His law said that if the thief is caught, that he is to pay back twice, four times, or five times, depending on the situation.

Then through a series of events that are too long to relate, I came back into contact with five cousins that I had lost track of from and early age. To make a long story short, after a road trip to visit two of them, the song from tree63 came on the radio and I remembered the dream and the promise and the prayer. And then I knew that God had restored back to me five times what the enemy had stolen.